Last night Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of the current bestseller Between the World and Me and National Correspondent for The Atlantic, was at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as part of our public program series, Between the Lines. Mr. Coates was brilliantly interviewed by New York Times Magazine and ProPublica reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones. Throughout the conversation, there was talk about books.
If you want to watch the program, it's available at Livestream.com.
The following are all the books recommended by Ta-Nehisi Coates (and one video) during his mesmerising talk at the Schomburg Center (in the order as they were mentioned). As Mr. Coates said, "folks who are not familiar with black literature, read this book and read a ton of other books."
The Fire Next Time in Collected Essays by James Baldwin.
Published in 1963, it contains two essays: "My Dungeon Shook — Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation," and "Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind."
The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life, His Ownby David Carr.
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist.
Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 by Arnold R. Hirsch.
Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union from Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.
Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court nomination That Changed America by Wil Haygood.
American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia by Edmund S. Morgan.
When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America by Paula Giddings.
Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching by Paula J. Giddings.
Coates said this book is "criminally underrated."
Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph.
This book is the only footnote in Between the World and Me.
Coates said it is "essential" reading.
Ta-Nehisi Coates also spent a great deal of time describing and recommended the video of the 1965 historic debate between James Baldwin v. William F. Buckley Jr. at Cambridge University on the question: "Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?" Watch the video from Mr. Coates's blog post.